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9/3/12

SERFS TOWELS SAINT ROLLER

How's Labor Day weekend, all you people back home?

The last few days have been fairly uneventful around here, since poor little Isaac came down with a fever (and accompanying woes) on Friday. When he coughs (all night long), he sounds like a barking seal.

An adorable barking seal, at any rate.

We spent the chilly weekend hibernating in blankets, building forts, and
watching classic films from the 80's (incidentally, the first time I'd
ever seen Footloose. Why are those pants back in style? Why?) Also, Tim brought home a new vacuum cleaner, the box of which proved to be an endless source of entertainment to both Isaac and
myself, since we are essentially the same age.

Other things that happened:

1) Tim dyed my hair back to the root-color. It was unintentional, and turned out very nicely.

2) I ran ten miles, officially ushering in the new 'training' stage. Summer is over, and with it my sporadic, noncommital 5k runs. I am looking for a half-marathon I can participate in this Fall (bumping a full marathon up to next year). My pace needs some work, which is a must if I'm going to continue running evening laps around my neighborhood. The thing is, you start to recognize people. They wave, make small talk, and (if you're me), yell, "Are you Isaac's mom?" Apparently they are all parents of Isaac's classmates, and I am notorious for my redhead child, my American accent, my always-hobo attire (a nice way to say that yeah, my clothes are falling apart and I have, thus far, refused to replace them), and my questionable ethnicity (I have been asked if I am Irish, Australian, German - by Danish people, and Danish - by German people. Also, Isaac's teacher approached me after school one day and said, "Laureen" - they call me 'Laureen' and I never bothered to correct them - "We were all wondering, are you Jewish?")

On Friday, while running, I passed the same two men conversing on the sidewalk for five straight laps. The first time they said hej; the second time they made a joke in Danish; the third and fourth time we pretended we hadn't seen each other at all and it was awkward since I had to basically run between them; and the fifth time they asked if I was coming back around again, to which I yelled "ONE MORE TIME" and they promptly went indoors so we could all avoid each other. Then, for the icing on the cake, some guy who'd been circling the neighborhood for the past hour (and also lives here, I think), pulled up by the curb and asked me 'how I got in good shape.' ... Which is a stupid question any way you look at it - a complete failure as a pick-up line, and a creepy thing to ask someone who has been running in circles for 80 minutes in the dark.

So, there's that.

An unrelated thing about running in Denmark: If you run just before dinner, you can distinctly smell everything everyone is cooking. It is tantalizing and occasionally cruel.

3) I got Instagram!

(<< See? This is a photo of the 'art' in the library courtyard. A friend of ours told us that the Germans left it during the Occupation, and I've accepted this theory. I can't fashion any other reasonable explanation for it.)

So, long story short, this guy Tim works with (who, incidentally, tried to trade an ipod for me once upon a time, because apparently that's what I'm worth), has indefinitely loaned me his old iphone. This has officially won me over, since I adore Instagram and would never consider getting an iphone otherwise because, well, hello - have you met me? I hate phones. I rarely make calls, I never take them; I buy the cheapest phones available for emergencies only, and have dropped two of them in paint cans, misplaced another, and given away a fourth; and, to top this glorious list off, have no patience whatsoever with texting. I was scrolling through an old conversation the other day and found this message: serfs towels saint roller. I still have no idea what this means, but I'd venture a guess at the one that says I aamu get oy sinne off auto word viini. I think that was my way of saying, I can't turn off this stupid auto word thing. Yeah, I fail at phones.

But, phones aside, Instagram is a simply lovely thing. And so much easier to cart around on days like today - a Final-Summer-Farewell kind of day - than my big old camera. I took my sick baby outdoors for a sunshine fieldtrip that went kind of like this: